Traveling Caution

Crack!

The gunshot went off, reverberating through the otherwise silent air. The walking corpse fell to the ground with a thud. Its head was now split in half and leaking dark red blood.

“Good shot, kid,” Ace told me as I engaged the safe on my rifle.

“Thanks,” I replied. It had been seven months since the “Walking” Plague had started, turning 90 percent of the world’s population into animated corpses that were constantly searching for fresh meat to consume, but I still hadn’t gotten used to the smell, look, or idea of zombies.

“Let’s keep moving,” Spade- the leader of our foursome- said, “We’ll go another few miles then set up camp for the night.” Thankfully we didn’t see anymore living dead before settling down in a wooded area outside of the empty town we had passed through.

“Kid, you stand first watch,” Spade spoke to me, “Then Ace, then Peewee, and I’ll take the last shift.” Everyone agreed to it then placed their mats down in the dirt as I lit a fire and sat on a boulder to watch out for zombies and raiders. I looked over my group as they slept soundly, letting out small noises or snores occasionally, and reflected on how I came into this group.

It was two months after the zombie infestation had become a problem that would never have a solution. I had lost my family and friends due to mounting tensions and skirmishes with other groups of humans trying to survive. I was camping out in a treehouse I had found on someone’s property when I heard approaching voices.

It was the trio that would end up taking me under their wing. Ace and Peewee were fifty-four-year-old steelworkers who had spent their whole lives hunting and Spade was a seventy-nine-year-old Vietnam veteran who still had a lot of steam powering his old engine.

“How old are you son?” Spade had asked me as I stood with my rifle aimed right between his eyes. It was a three to one Mexican standoff.

“Twenty-two, I’ll be twenty-three in October,” I called back. The other two had their weapons aimed and ready to take out each of my eyes, but Spade lowered his own gun when I replied.

“How would you like to join us as we search for a sanctuary, kid?” Spade asked kindly enough. His two followers didn’t argue, only lowered their own weapons at this.

I almost refused his offer but it had been three days since I had eaten anything more than a bag of potato chips and life on my own was getting too depressing so I allowed myself to enter their group. It was about as good as it could get in a zombie apocalypse with no women around.

Snap!

A tree branch silently shouted.

I jumped off the boulder, gun raised, and safety off. Ready to kill whatever came into view.

“Who’s there?” I called.

I saw the flash from within a bush before I heard the loud bang! of a weapon being fired. I felt wind felt past my ear with a whoosh sound. I dropped to the dirt as the other members of my group shot out of their slumber and armed themselves.

“How many are there?” Peewee asked through a harsh whisper.

“I don’t know. Could be one,” I answered, “maybe more.”

“Nobody make a move unless I say something or you see someone,” Spade said with cold leadership.

Another flash and loud noise as a bullet threw dirt into Ace’s eye. Peewee fired in the direction of the shot. There was no way of knowing if he hit his mark or not. The battle commenced.

Bullets whizzed overhead as we fired blindly in the general direction of where we saw the flashes of rifles being shot. My vision blurred slightly as my heartbeat picked up and the feeling of nausea took over. Still, I fought on from behind my boulder.

I could hear bullets hitting the stone. Crack! Crack! Crack! As they chipped the outer surface of the rock. Dust flew in my eye, but I had no time to worry about that. I heard a small thud as a body hit the ground twenty feet away from me at my last shot. A few more crashes from the others firing their weapons and everything went silent again.

“Did we kill them all?” Ace asked as he reloaded another magazine into his assault rifle.

“No way of telling,” Spade said, “Is anyone hurt?”

Ace and I replied that we were okay apart from debris getting into our eye and Peewee had had a bullet graze his forearm but there was only minor bleeding.

“Everyone stay down and on alert until I say otherwise,” Spade told us. And so we did. Lying in the dirt in pitch-black darkness, the only sound coming from crickets making their high-pitched noises. I lost track of time until the sun came up to reveal six dead bodies in surplus Army uniforms circled around our campsite.

“Must have been some kind of raiding clan,” Ace said as we scavenged the bodies for anything useful. There wasn’t much apart from bullets and a bottle of cheap whiskey. I came across the man I had killed.

He was young. Around my age, give or take a year, and his uniform was at least two sizes too big for him. He looked innocent and I felt the twinge of guilt take over as I threw up at the sight of his lifeless brown eyes staring up at me. Tears flooded my own eyes.

“Hey, kiddo,” Peewee tried to comfort me, “I know it’s hard, but you have to remember that this person was trying to kill you. It was you or him.”

“It still doesn’t feel like the right thing to do,” I said back, wiping the vomit from my lips and tears from my cheeks, “I was always raised to believe that killing was a sin.”

Peewee nodded solemnly then said, “Murder is a sin. And that is what these guys were trying to do- murder us. You were protecting yourself and us. It sucks, but you did the right thing.”

I nodded then quietly added, “Still doesn’t feel right,” when Peewee had walked out of hearing range. Why was it that during the biggest pandemic of human history, what little people were left still had to kill each other?

We regrouped with Spade and followed him through the forest into another ghost town that looked like it would have been a lovely place before the apocalypse. Bodies lined the streets and sidewalks in pools of blood that flowed through the gutters before drying horrible brown stains on the pavement and every window in every building was busted- through.

“Let’s check out that grocery store, Space,” Ace suggested, “Might be some food or water we could take with us.”

“Okay, but everyone stick together and be on high alert,” Spade told us.

The shelves were mostly picked through by people who had raided the shop before us. Most of what was left were moldy loaves of bread and rotting meat, but we were able to find a few cans of soup and a gallon of water that was still sealed. Nothing to shoot at, thankfully. We exited the store through the broken doors and continued down the main street of the town. A growing suspicion that something bad was about to happen took over me as we scanned the streets and alleys with our rifles. We were soldiers at war perpetually behind enemy lines.

“Does anyone else hear that?” Peewee asked out of nowhere. We stopped to listen and heard what he meant. It sounded like footsteps and an engine roaring.

“Everyone stay calm and follow my lead,” Spade spoke as we followed him down the road.

“Halt or I’ll kill every one of you!” a strange voice screamed. It belonged to a hulk of a man with a grisly beard and Army surplus uniform. He was with about eight other men in matching outfits around a couple of four-wheel-drive pickup trucks.

“Pardon me, friend,” Spade spoke up. My party and I were passing through town here-“

“Shut the fuck up, old man!” The man screamed and jerked his rifle forward, “I’m not your friend and what are you doing sneaking up on me and my group like that?”

“As I said, sir,” Spade spoke calmly, “We were just passing through town. We had no idea that you all were here.”

“We sent a small envoy out last night into the woods outside of town,” The man (who I guessed was in charge) spoke again, “They were supposed to be back last night but they have gone missing. They said they came across a camp of four men before their radio went silent. I don’t suppose you happen to know anything about that, do you?”

“Can’t say that I do, friend,” Spade was delivering an admirable way of handling this situation. I felt like falling down and crying in fear, “Might have lost signal and direction out in the woods… might have been something worse that happened to them last night.”

“I told you,” The militia leader hollered, “I’m not your god damn friend! And I know it was you four that killed them! My son was part of that envoy I sent out and he was only eighteen-years-old!” My heart dropped at this. The person I had killed last night was barely an adult and had a family still. Tears welled in my eyes again. I needed to lie down. The ground started rumbling.

“What’s that noise,” one of the militiamen asked from the tailgate of one of the trucks. He lowered his rifle from being aimed at me as he looked around in confusion. “Earthquake?”

“No,” Spade spoke with a haunting tone, “It’s a horde coming.”

The militant leader smiled and laughed evilly, “This is what you get for killing our brave men. And my dear son. Start the trucks!” he screamed.

“Please sir, you have to take us with you,” Peewee pleaded to the militia, “There aren’t many humans left and we have to band together.”

“Tell that to my son that you murdered,” the old man said as he opened the door to the front pickup.

“It was me that killed your son, these men were sleeping when I snuck upon them,” Spade attempted to barter for our lives, I tried to stop him but Ace cupped a hand over my mouth, “Leave me behind and take them.” The rumble was growing stronger as the lifeless “Uhhh” of zombies was becoming heard.

The bearded leader hung his head and nodded, “Alright, hop in the back, all of you. Quick, we’ll take you with us.”

A sigh of relief came over us as we started toward the trucks.

Crack!

The barrel of the man’s rifle jumped and Spade fell to the road into a running pile of blood. “Fucking assholes,” the group’s leader said as he hopped into the truck as the small convoy sped off, leaving a trail of floating dust behind.

“No! Spade!” I screamed and ran toward the man. He was dead before hitting the ground, but I tried waking him up anyway. It was useless and only left me in tears with blood on my hands. The horde had arrived.

Ace picked me up to my feet and started dragging me with him and Peewee as they fled the area, “We can mourn Spade later, but for now we have to go!”

I started running on my own volition. Tears clouding my vision and heart heavy from guilt and loss. What was the point in trying to survive? The horde of zombies was gaining on us.

“Quick, through here!” Peewee called as he turned a sharp corner down a small alleyway. We followed, “Kid, what’s the proof on that whiskey bottle?”

I pulled the bottle out of my satchel and tried to hold it steady enough to read, “One fifty-one!” I called.

“Perfect! Hand it over!”

I gave Peewee the bottle as he ripped a piece of his shirt off and stuffed it into the hole of the neck. He pulled a flip lighter out of his pocket and held the flame to the torn piece of fabric.

We took another turn and found ourselves on a main road again as the horde of walking corpses struggled to sprint through the narrow alleyway. Peewee tossed the Molotov cocktail to the first few lines of the horde as it erupted in blue flame, sending burning alcohol onto the horde. It bought us enough time to each empty a magazine of bullets on the horde. We had gotten rid of a good amount of the abominations chasing us but there were still too many to fight.

“Reload as you run!” Ace called as we ran for safety again. A stitch started to appear behind my ribs. My foot hit something and I was flying through the air before hitting the ground head first. The last thing I heard was Ace scream, “Kid!” Or maybe it was Peewee.

I wake up to the sound of running water. Ace is staring at me.

“W-wha-? How?” I ask. A pounding of pain rattles my skull.

Ace sighed and I could see real remorse in his eyes, “Peewee ran into the horse with a live grenade to allow me time to grab you after you fell.”

“Ace, I’m…” I trailed off, “I mean, Peewee should have-“ Ace interrupted.

“Kid, Herman was my best friend ever since grade school and I am going to miss him greatly,” Ace said with pain, it was the first time I heard any of their real names, “But the life of the younger is more valuable than the older.”

“No, that’s not true,” I argued. Guilty that both Spade now Peewee had died for my mistakes.

“Don’t let Herman’s death go in vain, Kid,” Ace spoke, “And don’t disrespect him or yourself like that. You deserve a chance at life even in this shitty time. Herman, Spade, and I all got to do it and now it is your time.”

I opened my mouth to say something before realizing that I was laying on an actual bed and what I thought was running water was actually a coffee machine making a fresh pot for Ace and me, “Where are we?” I asked.

“The attackers had almost gained on me as I carried you when a group of men and women came to my rescue and decimated the horde. They were hiding from the militia we ran into but came to the rescue when they saw us running,” Ace informed me. “We are in their makeshift infirmary and they have invited us to stay if we like. I think we should take the offer.”

Just then, a pretty girl with nice green eyes and a nurse uniform walked in to ask us how we are doing. I could hardly contain my excitement. Eight months of the only women I had seen being zombies or corpses. My smile went unhindered, but I didn’t care.

“What do you say, kid,” Ace asked with his own dumb smile, “Want to stay here?” he winked at me then mouthed, “She thinks you’re cute.”

I never got a chance to give my reply that yes, of course, I wanted to stay- it was safe and there were girls here. Ace walked out of the room to find work for the two of us within the community as the nurse, named Corrine, conversed with me.

Skirmishes still happened and zombies ruled the world, but we were safe and happy.